What is Home Without a Mother?

What is home without a mother!
What are all the joys we meet,
When her loving smile no longer
Greets the coming, coming of our feet?
The days seem long, the nights are drear,
And time rolls slowly on;
And, oh! how few are childhood’s pleasures,
When her gentle care is gone!

Things we prize are first to vanish,
Hearts we love to pass away;
And how soon e’en in our childhood,
We behold her turning, turning gray?
Her eye grows dim, her step is slow,
Her joys on earth are past;
And sometimes, ere we learn to knew her,
She hath breath’d on earth, on earth her last.

Older hearts may have their sorrows,
Griefs that quickly die away;
But a mother, lost in childhood,
Grieves the heart, the heart from day to day;
We miss her kind, her willing hand,
Her fond and earnest care;
And oh! how dark is life around us,
What is home without, without her there?

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